


i need someone who understands me

by neostigmine



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/F, POV Second Person, Post-Finale, Sharing a Bed, Snowed In, also also idk if cussing would constitute a teen rating so yolo i guess, also no betas we die like men, it's more like a couch, kind of, lapslock, lovelace is a mountain lesbian In My Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 05:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13563903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neostigmine/pseuds/neostigmine
Summary: “so,” you start, “you talked to your husband, right?”“ex-husband.” she replies.you wonder if it’s worth pushing this topic, but neither of you are going anywhere anytime soon, given the blizzard and all.“he moved on?” might as well.





	i need someone who understands me

“yeah. i don’t blame him- he  _was_  told i was dead and all.” she keeps glancing between the fire and the window. she’s never  _this_  skittish when it comes to the hard conversations.

must’ve been a doozy.

“you don’t have to talk about it-”

“you know what he told me, isabel?” she pauses before taking a shakey breath, “he said that it would be like living with a ghost and...” her voice cracks.

“and?”

“he couldn’t... just up and leave what he had.” 

yeah, makes sense. you tried to vague around how it would be nigh impossible for her to go back to before goddard, before everything went to complete shit, before... whatever this was.

you let her sit. the silence is different from the other silences you shared, one where the only expectation is that you’re here for her. not like you ever  _weren’t_  as of late.

“and i...” she takes a deep breath “don’t know why i thought i could just-”

“waltz back in?”

“yeah, waltz back in,” she takes a sip from her coffee “like nothing ever happened.”

_like you did months ago?_  you want to say. you don’t, since you have the suspicion renée’s about a minute away from an emotional breakdown. you notice she’s laid her head down on the table and there’s a shakey quality to the deep breaths she’s taking.

you hated seeing her like this. this wasn’t the renée minkowski you knew, the renée minkowski that saved your sorry asses, the renée minkowski that... is currently bearing her soul at your kitchen table in the middle of a blizzard.

or, was bearing her soul and was at your kitchen table. you’ve managed to get her bundled up in some blankets on your couch (after shooing your dogs off of it) and the two of you sit.

you sit in silence, again, the occasional popping and cracking of the fire being the only thing in the way of ambient noises.

you’d comment on how  _stupidly_  romantic this was, given the blizzard and the fire and the bundle of blankets for two people who are  _only_  best friends because of shared trauma, but you’d be kidding yourself.

you would always be kidding yourself when you see your dogs follow her around like they’re lost ducklings because she has a plate of food and you know she “accidentally” drops some of it for them (you don’t say anything) and you think you could get used to this,

or when she would join you on your morning runs and the two of you would only subtly push each other to go just a hair farther before one of you stops in “defeat,”

or right now, in this moment, when all you want to do after you pull her into an embrace so she can cry into your shoulder is tell her you love her.

yeah, totally platonic best friends. not a hint of repressed emotions and unrequited pining on your part because she is (was) married and you’re trying to keep those under-wraps.

“and i banked  _everything_  on that and-”

“hey, renée, look at me,” you wipe her tears with the cuff of your sweater, “you didn’t bank everything on your husband taking you back.”

“no, i  _did_  isabe-”

“if you did, you wouldn’t have spent the insane amount of time it took to track me down,” she looks at you confused, “and you wouldn’t have shown up at my door at three in the morning asking if you could sleep on my couch for a little bit, and you-”

“wouldn’t have stayed as long if i wasn’t sure you’d let me in.” she sniffles. there’s tears welling up in her eyes and almost instinctively you wipe them with your cuff again.

“you get it?” you ask. she leans back into your shoulder. she isn’t sobbing this time, which is an improvement. you feel a faint nod.

you stare at the fire for what seems like hours, rubbing her back and whispering in her ear when she takes a sharp breath. at some point, you manage to lay against the arm and weasel your way under the blankets with her curled up against your chest. she’s dozing off and you  _should_  go throw another couple of logs on the fire, but you don’t want to wake her.

you’d been having that thought lately, of not wanting to wake her. it started out as you just... not banging pots and pans and slamming cabinet doors in the morning, out of courtesy for the guest sleeping on your couch in your slightly too small cabin. of course, it slowly morphed into you waiting for her to wake up to take your dogs out in the morning, getting used to only the faintest alarm blares to wake you up, and currently, resigning yourself to sleeping on the couch with her.

not that you were complaining about that part. you weren’t complaining about any of it, really. when you thought about it, you missed her more than anything this side of the galaxy. maybe it was a side effect of the shared trauma, maybe you’re  _really_  in deep with this pining for renée minkowski thing.

or, it was both. you wonder if she felt the same way about you, about the thing you two had, about any of this. you’re pretty sure she did since otherwise she would’ve left before winter set in, but you just couldn’t tell with her.

god, you loved her. you loved her more than there were stars in the sky and you wanted nothing more than to tell her this, but something stopped you. something always stopped you, the way it stopped you from calling her up before she tracked you down, the way it stopped you from visiting her, the way it stopped you from-

“i love you.” you almost don’t hear yourself. it comes out so quiet and so...  _natural_ , like this is totally a normal thing the two of you do on a tuesday night. and maybe it’s the nerves talking, but you swear you feel her smile as she snuggles closer into you and she actually isn’t asleep and she heard that and-

you’ll face this bridge in the morning, you guess.

but for now, you’re tired, she’s warm, and trying to shovel a path to the firewood was going to be an all day affair when both of you decide to go outside in the morning.

* * *

 

_in the morning, you find her making breakfast for a change. the dogs are around her, of course, sniffing around for any dropped bacon pieces._

_“morning, sleepyhead,” you hear the distinctive noise of two eighty-plus pound dogs diving for a piece (or three) of bacon, “you didn’t have to sleep on the couch last night.”  
_

_“didn’t want to wake you,” you pour yourself a cup of coffee, “by the way, at the rate you’re feeding her, spice is going to get fat.”  
_

_“she’s already over one hundred pounds, what’s a piece of bacon going to do to her?”  
_

_“make her fat-”  
_

_“she’s not fat, she’s_ fluffy. _” she turns around to give you that look of ‘i’m technically not wrong, now am i?’_

_you roll your eyes. she brushes past you to get a couple of plates._

_“oh, and isabel?” you look up from your cup, “love you too.”_

**Author's Note:**

> sober me hates the decisions that drunk me makes regarding actually posting the fic i write so uh, here we go i guess this is better than it rotting in my tumblr drafts. title is from anna of the north's someone
> 
> anyway, yell with me @ jacobiapologist on tumblr, if you want some content that i'm actually good at making, my fanmixes are up @ neostigmine on 8tracks and playmoss (playmoss has the wolf ones, 8tracks has a variety of fandoms) or /tagged/nora's infinite fanmix if you want to just scroll through them.
> 
> also literally all i write in is second person i'm so sorry.


End file.
